Unlocking Performance Potential | Trainers Talking Truth

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In this episode, we delve into the fascinating world of athlete monitoring technologies and their profound impact on enhancing performance and reducing the risk of injuries.

Podcast Introduction:

Welcome to Trainers Talking Truths. This is an ISSA podcast dedicated to exploring the fitness industry and uncovering the whys and hows of personal training. To do that, we'll talk directly to the industry experts and certified trainers. We'll dig into fitness programming, business tactics, nutrition and more. You'll even hear from current training clients who offer insight from the other side. We've got the fitness industry covered, so turn up the volume and enjoy the drive.

Jenny Scott:

Hello world. Welcome back for another ISSA podcast, Trainers Talking Truths. It's your co-host, Jenny Scott here with my favorite podcast co-host, Dan the man Duran. What's going on, Dan?

Dan Duran:

Well, Jenny, I mean I could tell you about the problem I'm having with the skunk right outside my office door, but instead I'm going to tell you... Yeah, it reeks In here... What I'm going to tell you is how excited I am to be talking about a topic that arguably is the most discussed, the most important to clients and athletes. Period. End of sentence. And that is body composition.

Jenny Scott:

Yes. So body composition, we're going to relate it to one of my absolute favorite topics as a fitness professional, and that is strength and conditioning. I absolutely love working with athletes. I am an athlete, I love working with them, it's absolutely what I love doing in this field, and I found that out probably halfway through my career. I realized that it's more like specialized, advanced people... Like my husband laughs at me, we'll go to sporting events like the local soccer team here, the pro team. I'll go watch them and I'm watching the trainer with the athletes on the side, not the game. And he's like, "What are you looking at?" I'm like, "Watch them move. Look at them. Look at them go." And he's just like, "You're so weird." I'm that person who's watching everything on the side, but so excited to have a phenomenal guest with us, a former collegiate athlete, professional strength and conditioning coach, Chris Reader. Welcome Chris.

Chris Reader:

Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. I'm super excited to get to talk about this. I don't get to talk about it as much now that I'm not on the floor coaching, so I am hyped to have a -

Jenny Scott:

Do you miss it?

Chris Reader:

I get the coaching itch every once in a while, but I do have a really cool position here. But every once in a while I'm like, "Boy, just to blow a whistle or yell at someone." I do miss it.

Jenny Scott:

I love it. Have you seen Ted Lasso?

Chris Reader:

Yeah, I am that guy. Never used a whistle. I just-

Jenny Scott:

Right whistle.

Chris Reader:

... Clap or like, hey. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenny Scott:

I'm going to start doing that when I coach volleyball. I'm just going to yell whistle. I love it.

How did you get into the fitness industry and to where you are now?

Jenny Scott:

So Chris, tell our listeners a little bit about you and how you got started in the fitness industry. Take us way back. Start from the beginning

Chris Reader:

Way back. So I got started in the fitness industry... Collegiate athlete, didn't know what I wanted to do, like most athletes, exercise science sounds like a fun major. So did that. So at the end of my undergrad career I was like, okay, what do I do with this? And so I did the classic, everybody wants to be a physical therapist, everyone wants to go to PT school. Got into PT school, did some shadowing and I was like, "Absolutely not for me. This is not what I wanted to do." So took a step back and I was like, okay. And after having some really cool people in my life show me the options, I decided to go, very similar to you, strength and conditioning. So I went and did my masters in exercise phys with a concentration of strength and conditioning. And then that is how I got pushed into to coaching and then an extension, more athlete monitoring and things that come with athlete monitoring.

So was on the floor for a while with some collegiate teams and then again with the development in technologies and tracking technologies, they were like, "Hey, you're pretty good at this and you show an interest in this, why don't you take this over?" And that's kind of how I got started. Bummed around with some teams was with the men's national team for a while and then now I'm switched over to the commercial side, which is also really interesting. I never thought it would be for me and then I realized there's a whole other world to this. And there's more opportunities, more things to explore on the commercial side, which is something that I will admit I was like, "Commercial industry, commercial fitness... I don't know." And then now I love it. So that is my background. So again, very much ingrained strength conditioning coach and I've found this really cool hybrid role for myself here at Evolt. Yeah.

Jenny Scott:

Very cool. Now I'm curious, you said the national team, what sports did you work with?

Chris Reader:

So I was mainly field-based, so soccers, field hockeys, lacrosses, cross countries, but mainly men and women's soccer at the collegiate level. And then I went to the USL, which is the tier below MLS. So I was with a team there for a while and then I transitioned to the national team. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenny Scott:

That's awesome. Such a cool experience.

Chris Reader:

Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Duran:

I might be picking your brain, Chris. I've got a junior becoming a senior and we're trying to get him a scholarship for lacrosse. We just got back from Utah at whatever they call them where all the coaches come and watch them.

Chris Reader:

Yeah, like showcases or whatever days.

Dan Duran:

Yeah, it was a showcase.

Chris Reader:

Yep.

Dan Duran:

Two different showcases. Yeah, I've heard a lot of whistles the last week-

Jenny Scott:

Whistle.

Dan Duran:

... Speaking of which, and now I can't get this song out of my head by Too Short, Blow the Whistle. Tell me I'm wrong.

Jenny Scott:

Oh gosh.

Dan Duran:

That's a classic man. That's an awesome song-

Jenny Scott:

Overlay it here.

Dan Duran:

... And I just keep hearing Too Short in my ears. All right. So anyway, back on topic here.

 What are some monitoring devices we can use and how does monitoring enhance performance or reduce injury?

Dan Duran:

Chris, when I got started in this industry and understanding and learning about body composition, really there was skinfold and hydrostatic weighing. And hydrostatic weighing, I'm sure they still do it, but they drive the unit around and take it to different gyms and take it to different schools and so forth. But in the last, let's just call it 15 years, the evolution of technology is just mind-blowing. It's absolutely mind-blowing. So can you share with us and our listeners, what are some of the types of monitoring devices that we can use now and how does monitoring those athletes and those technologies, how does that enhance performance or reduce injury and so forth?

Chris Reader:

Sure. Yeah. So with body composition... We'll start there and then we'll foray out a little bit. With body composition specifically, like you said, it was always calipers or you had to go someplace that had a hydrostatic weighing tank. And I think a lot of your collegiate... My wife has an exercise phys lab, she's a professor. So in her lab she does have a hydro. Is it used that frequently? No, because there's a lot that goes into it. Taking your clothes off, getting in there, trying a couple times, make sure you blow out all your air as you go under, there's a lot that goes to it. So I do think in terms of everyday tracking, everyday use, BIA technology has been the thing that's popped up as, this is convenient, it's accurate, it's reliable, and it helps coaches because you don't need a whole separate room for this, you don't need a giant footprint for this. This is something, again, the research shows that it works. You can do some type of body composition assessment within 60 seconds.

So I do think in terms of the things that we're seeing jump or come up to the forefront, BIA is the one in most of your commercial settings, but even in collegiate settings that I can have all my athletes... I have 25 guys, all hop on there, they do a scan and I can look at what's going on in terms of how their body comp has changed from pre-season in-season or post-season, whatever the case may be. With those technologies one thing I do always mention is the fight that I always had to fight was making sure that my athletes knew the difference between monitoring and surveillance, if that makes sense because I do think there's a fine line, especially the more high performance your athletes or your clients are, you need more data to... Because they do have such a good training background or a high training age that the little things do matter. So the more data we can collect, the more we can hopefully fine tune whatever training program they're on.

Then again, they're like, "Why are you collecting this? Why are you doing this? What are you doing with that?" So with that, that's one thing I'll always set the ground with is make sure we're monitoring and not big brothering our athletes. It is good, but it can be overwhelming, obviously. But with body composition specifically in technology associated with body composition, I always used it in conjunction with something. Again, I've always used BIA... Again, whether people are like, "Well you should use DEXA or skinfolds or hydro," I use BIA because most of the scanners that I've used are five compartment models. So they give me a lean mass, fat mass breakdown in limbs as well and that's what I really use it for.

With my soccer players, most of them collegiate soccer players, they're lean. Do I really care if they're 14% body fat or 15.5% body fat? No. Not if we're winning, they feel good, everything... You know what I mean? That doesn't come into play for me. But what does matter is I have someone that did his MCL and he's been out eight weeks, he gets on that scanner and I see a drop in lean mass in that left leg. Okay, I'm going to take this and obviously he's on some type of return to play programming, but then whether we're using GPS to monitor his direction of he's going right or left, is he still favoring that leg? Is he gaining lean mass appropriately at this specific time in this return to play program? So I do think that's where we see it enhancing performance.

When my athletes always ask me like, "Hey coach, why do you always do this when we come back from summer break?" And Jenny, you probably get this as well... But it's like, "I need to make sure one, that you didn't gain too much of the wrong stuff." And I always broke it down like this, "You can't contract fat." Right? So you can contract muscle and that extra fat when you're moving right and all of a sudden you need to change direction and move left, that fat still moves in the direction that you were going. Right? And you can't control how your muscles move when there's extra fat on that. Your muscles have to work harder, that increases fatigue and that puts you at a greater risk of not being able to complete a game or potentially having some type of non-contact injury. So that that's where the basis of tracking body composition comes from. There are some pretty cool things in the research that show, yeah, if you have X amount of pounds more of what they call non-essential fat, you do increase your rate of fatigue and you do increase your rate of injury because you're just not in shape to play unfortunately.

Jenny Scott:

You're carrying around extra stuff that doesn't need to be there.

Chris Reader:

Yep. It doesn't need be there.

Jenny Scott:

There's what I tell, especially my female athletes, I think you're right, there's a fine line because you don't want to tell them you have to be 18%, what your actual percentage is doesn't matter? But is there a benefit, a performance benefit to having 30% or 40% body fat? Absolutely not, for the reasons that you're mentioning. So is it beneficial for an athlete to have excess body fat? No. That's the point, right?

Chris Reader:

Right. Right. Yeah.

Dan Duran:

I feel like he was looking at me when he was talking about, you try to go right. I know he wasn't looking at you Jenny, because-

Chris Reader:

You guys are on the same side of my screen so it was-

Dan Duran:

Okay. Okay. I know you weren't looking at Jenny.

Jenny Scott:

It was a double player.

Chris Reader:

Yeah. No.

What else can we monitor for athletes that can help them reduce their risk of injury or perform better?

Jenny Scott:

Well, I think that's very interesting though Chris. The way that you're breaking it down, yes, you're monitoring like pre-season, post-season, in-season, you should be at your relatively lowest body fat when you're in-season and performing, et cetera. So yeah, you're looking at trends, but you also brought up some other really great things that you can do with that information. Specifically looking at their muscle mass, if they're trying to gain some, lose some, if they're imbalanced in some way, bioelectrical impedance, which is BIA that he was referring to is super important for that.

But I know I want to touch on this briefly and then we'll come back to body composition. What else can we monitor? And I know you've done a lot of this in your career, what else can we monitor for athletes that can help them reduce their risk of injury or perform better?

Chris Reader:

Yeah. And one thing, people always laughed at me, but it was always my go-to and you know guys as coaches will appreciate this, I was always a fan of basic RPEs. Especially with my younger athletes, on their programming I would have a session RPE or after they came off the field, if I was with the soccer team, I would ask them. I'd pull them... Like Dan comes off in the 78-minute, sub comes on, I'll pull him aside. "Dan, here's your chocolate milk, here's your Gatorade. What was that for you one through 10?" And Dan's, "Six. Felt good, felt great." And I would just track that. And then it's because it's always interesting is you have those guys and then you have a sub that goes on and I pull the sub off and, "Hey Jenny, how was that?" And you're like, "It's a two," but you're like pale and you're... And I was like, "Was it a two?"

And so you can start to see this. So honestly something, if you don't have all the money in the world, basic session RPEs, tracking those over the course of whatever program you're doing. If we're in a GPP phase, or a hypertrophy phase or a power phase of we're meeting like we're trying to peak for the season, track what they're feeling in those sessions. There's a lot of really cool research on self-perceived RPE in sessions that show what rates of fatigue are later in whatever field sport they go and play or court sport.

From that though, some things we've typically done, and again I've... With the collegiate sports, sometimes I think we have too much money so we just buy stuff to have stuff. But some really good things obviously I've always used as heart rate straps, you can't lie about your heart rate. Heart rate tells me exactly what I need to know. You tell me you feel great, but I look and see that you've spent 65 minutes in red. I'm like, "Oh, maybe we have some conditioning work to do." Right?

GPS I think is pretty interesting in the fact that when it first came out, and I remember when an unnamed brand I used came out, it was fresh to the US, we used it to see what it was like. Pretty expensive and so expensive that even, I was at the division one program, we leased it. They were like, "I don't know about this." Right? But this company now has units for individual purchase, which is pretty neat. You can go onto their website and purchase a unit for 75 bucks and track your own training, which I think is pretty wild that you can just buy a GPS unit and now you have all your data. So I think GPS is pretty interesting because a lot of those people will use that as, well how fast is my top end speed? And there's a lot of cool things apart from that I think really show you what else the athlete is having issues with.

And bringing it back to body composition, I had a female basketball player, number one basketball player in the country, she came to play at our school her freshman year. So she came in with a torn ACL. So we did repeated BIA scans as she was getting better. Lean mass, obviously very, very low in that injured leg. She was cleared for full contact, everything, she was ready to rock and roll. I would do weekly scans, again tracking that lean mass in that injured leg. And what was interesting though is the GPS units, we would wear would also track her change of direction. And even though knee was perfectly fine, she was putting on lean mass in that knee, she still would cut... I forget the percent breakdown, but it was pretty one-sided she was still favoring the uninjured leg even though that knee was good to go. And so at that point then we were like, "Okay, physiologically she's good. Do we get the team psych involved now? Because she clearly does not want to jump off that knee." So body comp told me, "Hey, it's good, but there's something else going on to where we're not at full performance yet," which is pretty crazy that we were able to see left, left, left, an occasional jump off the right leg, left, left leg. So pretty interesting like that in terms of GPS usage.

And the last thing that I think has been pretty cool in my experience has been force plates. Those are been new and I think in a athletic performance setting, again, they used to be like 30 grand for a force plate. Now you can buy, there is a brand, they have some that for two different force plates, they come together, they're roughly $1,500. So it's come down quite a bit. But the data you get with that jump curves, mid-thigh pulls to test max strength during season. Those are things that again, when you have injured athletes... And this is what I've used it for, I have an injured athlete, I test body composition, I'm going to make them do some vertical jump testing to look at peak power. Is peak power dropping off? Is that making them slower on the field?

I had some experience with division one football program and that's what we used it for. They're classic for body composition during season. Those guys get beat up big time. And so most collegiate football players actually lose lean mass over the course of the season. I mean they're getting hammered every week. Schedules are really busy. And so we would see guys get slow, slow, slow, body comp they lose lean mass, they're losing muscle mass and their peak power suffers from that, which shows us on that jump curve.

So basic things that I tell people, body comp gives you a good idea of what's going on, you know you're losing or gaining. And then from there, what other tools can we use to say how can I intervene in this training process to not let this happen? If that makes sense.

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Jenny Scott:

Yeah. What are your thoughts on the jumpers, the little jump trainers? I actually work with volleyball a lot, so like-

Chris Reader:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jenny Scott:

... They wear on their belt or in their socks, that tracks the amount of jumps, their height, all that kind of stuff. What are your thoughts on those?

Chris Reader:

Yep. I think, so volume is the biggest fatiguer of athletic performance in season. So if they're jumping three, 400 times every single day, eventually you're going to see fatigue. Eventually, again, you could see some lean mass related issues of they just can't jump as high or as powerful as they did at the beginning of the season. So, yeah, I've seen those were coming around right as I was leaving the coaching game, especially with a sport with such repeated movements. Not even jumping, but all the overhand movements. I mean volleyball is, there's some wear and tear with the back, ankles and shoulders. So 100%.

Jenny Scott:

Absolutely. Yeah. Lots of cool devices out there. Is there anything... So field sport, Dan's kiddo plays lacrosse.

Chris Reader:

Yeah.

Jenny Scott:

Are there any other things... I mean, is it similar to soccer? I mean obviously they're not kicking the ball, it's in their little, what do you call it-

Chris Reader:

It's a little tougher, right Dan?

Jenny Scott:

Little stoop.

Dan Duran:

Their stick?

Jenny Scott:

Yeah, it's their stick.

Chris Reader:

It's a lot tougher.

 How do you monitor a high school athlete versus a college athlete?

Jenny Scott:

Their net, whatever it is. I don't know, I just know you have to keep rocking it back and forth, but is there anything specific for... Especially think high school level athlete, would you do something different for a high school lacrosse player than you would for a college level lacrosse player?

Chris Reader:

Yeah, I think the cool thing about high school aged athletes is they're... I always thought I could do more impactful things with them by just getting them in the weight room. Dan, I don't know your son probably, he's probably on it, but even, "Hey, did you eat today? What have you eaten?" You know what I mean? So those are the things that I think with high schoolers, I've always used session RPEs, I really have. And I tell them like, "This is not me judging you. This is not me shaming you. I want to know how you feel. I want to know can I put more weight on the bar? Can we do X amount more volume in your actual conditioning?" And once they understand that like, "Oh, this guy's actually trying to help me." They're super honest with RPEs. And then with my youth guys in the national team, I see four fours in a row, their RPEs are fours or I see on the other hand, three nines in a row and I'm like, "Hey, why is this so tough?" And it's like I had a kid, he was homesick, he's been away for two weeks. Before he left he got in a little car crash and he's just like, "I'm not having a good time." So it was tough on him.

So I think with high schoolers, they're still kids. And that's the one thing I've always, coming from a collegiate background that I had to like, "Hey, these guys, they're not collegiate athletes. Talk to them and let them understand that you're heal here to help." And whatever and I kept it super basic with my high school guys. Versus with your college guys, you do have all the tech in the world that you can track sleep and they have a nutritionist there making them food after their lifts and things like that. And it's one of those things with high schoolers as well, I always, always talk to the parents after the session. It's one of those things like, "This is what I'm seeing and more often than not the parents are all about it." They're like, "Yeah, I'll get him to eat." It's super simple.

Dan Duran:

Or not eat.

Chris Reader:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenny Scott:

That's awesome.

What other technologies are available to assess recovery?

Dan Duran:

So I want to sidestep just a bit before we wrap up here, Chris, because we've really covered a lot of great information here and frankly, Jenny and I had a list of questions and I think we've knocked out the majority of those. But I'm really loving what you're... When you're talking about technologies and what you're measuring, what you intend to move by measuring with those athletes and in particular at a college level. So my question is, what about other technologies? Are you using heart rate variability? You mentioned a heart rate monitor, but are you using any of that technology to assess recovery?

Chris Reader:

100%. So HRV is the big thing we used with heart rate. And depending how quickly someone can drop back down to essentially their resting heart rate tells you a lot about their aerobic conditioning. And Dan, you probably fight this fight. Jenny, you fight this fight. I think aerobic conditioning and cardio's gotten a bad rap lately, but people forget it is the base function of athletic performance. If you don't got an engine, you're not going. And so that's what HRV tells me is how quickly can I get you up, but also how quickly can you recover and go again? So that's mainly what I use when I've looked at heart rate, it's HRV, but also positional, tactical things.

Like for lacrosse, for example, what do my middies look like compared to my attack? Middies typically probably run a little bit more than the other two positions. So if I have this kid versus this kid and this kid just sits 140 beats, doesn't ever get up to it, doesn't ever drop below it. But then I have another kid that's always bumping up and down, I probably know who's the fitter of my two midfielders. And so that's typically how we looked at that. And that's not shaming the kid, that's maybe not as fitter, but maybe we need to do a little bit of extra conditioning outside of training to make sure again, we're at a place where we're fit enough to play and fit enough to do the demand of our position in sport.

Dan Duran:

It's funny, when I first got into the triathlon world, my mentor who I've referenced a lot and we've had as a guest, Rodney Corn, and I were chatting around aerobic fitness and fitness in general and heart rate and recovery and so forth. And he said, "You know, Dan, if you really want to do a triathlon where you're measuring the aerobic fitness, you ought to consider you have to swim X laps, but then you can't swim another lap until you've recovered to 65% of max heart rate. Then you get to go again and you can't go again until you've recovered at 65 and then so on and so forth." And that always resonates with me when I'm training and I'm doing my intervals, heart rate recovery work, is how fast am I recovering back down to 65% or lower? And the faster that happens the more I feel I've progressed.

Chris Reader:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm the same way. And I'm a runner, so you probably get this as well. There's some days where you're meant to be a long, slow, steady run, but then you're like, "Why am I up this high?" And you're like, "I have no idea." So it's like take it back, relax or wait till you get back to a spot where you can actually train the way that this program was meant to be done.

Dan Duran:

Absolutely.

Chris Reader:

Yep. Yep.

Dan Duran:

Absolutely. Jenny's a runner. Huh, Jenny?

Jenny Scott:

Absolutely not. Chris, I don't even run when being chased. It's a no.

Dan Duran:

She's a bodybuilder though, so she doesn't have to run.

Chris Reader:

That's fair enough.

What types of BIA devices would you recommend?

Jenny Scott:

I chose a sport ride where I don't have to run. And volleyball, it's just short bursts. I love it. No. I'm interested though too, Chris, you mentioned some BIA devices. Do you have any specific ones? Does Evolt have any? Are there any out there that you would recommend? And I'm talking different price points because it's always nice to recommend that $5,000 in-body machine. Right? But not everybody can afford that.

Chris Reader:

Yeah. So with BIA, the thing that I caution people and maybe not caution, but I just want people to know that while it's all the same technology, it's always going to be a different algorithm. So what Evolt has to InBody, versus Tanita, versus Seca, they're all going to read slightly different. And most of that technology typically you'll see about a 1-4% variance and in body fat percent, and granted everyone... That's the first number they're drawn to whether we like it or not, I try to coach away from that. But that is the question I'm always asked. So that's the one thing I'll always caution. So if someone has an InBody scan, they come and do an Evolt scan, they go and do a seca scan, they might see 14%, they might see 16.2 and then they might see 17.1. Unfortunately, that's what we see with the technology.

What I then let people know is how often are you going to use this and how in-depth are we going to use it? Because you can get a handheld BIA off of Amazon for 50 bucks and it's all based on the compartments that we measure. And so typically those handhelds are the scales that you have... I have one at home, it's a scale. It tells me my weight every morning but it also just happens to give me my body fat percent, some days great, some days not so great. Yeah. But those are all two-compartment models. So essentially a current moves through two compartments and then essentially estimates the other three compartments. So if you see these full body scanners where you're standing on it, but then there's some type of handle component, those are typically five-compartment models. So each arm, each leg, as well as the torso, it's nice as you're going to see less variance on that because you are measuring more tissue so that the accuracy and the reliability of scan-to-scan tracking and monitoring that is much higher.

Granted, those typically are a little bit more expensive, you'll probably see those in the $5-7,000 range. But those are also again what you would see in high-end weight rooms, research labs, things like that. So it just depends and with what I say with, BI is... If you're comparing it to DEXAs and things like that, you're going to see obviously some variance. But a lot of the research does show that in terms of scan-to-scan tracking, BIA is a very valid technology to use it. It just depends on when you're shopping, how often is it going to be used and what are you actually looking for? If this is just going to be one-off random people come up and grab, then sure a two-compartment model might be perfectly fine, versus if this is going to be part of your gym, part of your member retention, or part of your athlete retention, or some type of you're using this to track certain phases of training, then I do think the five compartment model would probably be best served for your coaching purposes. Truly. Yeah.

But like you said, price points, they can be from $50 to $7,000. It just depends on the bells and whistles that come with it as well. A lot of them, I think is really neat, they have apps, end-user apps. So now your clients can track their own progression, even if they go home for the summer and you don't see them, if they have a gym somewhere that has that same technology, they can get on there and do their off season programming that they're supposed to be doing and they can make sure things are going the way they need to go, which is really neat that now you have a system that speaks to each other and they can present you with that data, as coaches see fit.

Jenny Scott:

I love that. Yeah, because there are so many different models. We always talk in bootcamp with people who are just getting into the field about the RENPHO scales that you can find on Amazon. I personally have one. And they actually, good for RENPHO because they actually updated their software somewhere in the last year, they now have an athlete mode, air quotes. So you can click that and it's far more accurate because I'm that person that does DEXAs three or four times a year, so I know pretty precisely where my body fits at and it's always been off by 10 or 12% in the regular mode. But in athlete mode it's only off by 2 or 3%. And so at least I'm looking at trends like you said, just up or down.

Chris Reader:

100% and you nailed it. And I think a lot of people... It's one of those things that if you are athletically built, you do carry a bit more muscle. It's one of those things that chances are, with BIA technology, we are using some aggregated population data. I'm 5'10", 182 pounds as of this morning. So they're using in that software, in that algorithm they're taking, okay, he's 5'10", he's 182-pound, 31-year-old male. This is typically what we see in terms of body tissue breakdown. If you don't fall within that lovely distributed bell curve, that's where you start to see some of those numbers, like yourself, you are leaner, you carry more muscle than your average population and so that will skew a little bit. And most models, your higher end models do account for that athletic population or that population that maybe is a slight outlier compared to general public. Yep. Yep.

Jenny Scott:

Nice. So there are things out there, Dan, you should talk to him off the air and see what you can get.

Dan Duran:

I know. I know. Well, look, here's the facts that I reached out to them originally just for that. I'm like, I got to get one of these because I'm training my high school athlete son and he does exactly what he's asked, by the way. He's a great client. And I'm like, I just tell him, "Lift your shirt dude, look at your abs in the mirror every day. Give me your weight every day." And that's good enough for now. But I would love to be able to take it to the next level because to your point, he dropped over 10 pounds of body weight during the lacrosse season and based on visual, I would say most of that was in body mass. It's just tough to keep it on when you're running every day and playing sports. So he was sad and now we're building it back on, but having some way of measuring that just a little bit more because he's very analytical, the three of us. I think that would be beneficial. So I'm like, I'm going to reach out to these guys. Then I had so much fun talking to you, I'm like, "Shoot, let's just get him on the podcast."

Chris Reader:

Well Dan, I'll talk to Ashley.

Dan Duran:

All right. There you go.

Chris Reader:

She's literally In the other room so I'll let her know.

Jenny Scott:

Nice. That was-

Dan Duran:

Well that's how it's folks. I got to snivel on the podcast in front of thousands of people.

Tell us about Evolt and how listeners can connect with you to learn more.

Jenny Scott:

Right. Well tell us a little bit about Evolt. What devices are you guys actually talking about right now and how can our listeners find you, Chris?

Chris Reader:

Yeah, so Evolt, Australian-based company, we're rolling up steam here in the US. We've been in the US three years, which is really cool that during COVID they actually... I joined right after COVID... But during COVID, business as usual, which is pretty cool. So especially Australia had some pretty strict lockdowns. So that was pretty... Now that things are open, we're rolling, almost... Sometimes I'm like, "Whew, let me catch my breath a little bit." But we do do body scanning, BIA, five compartment models. So on the range of things you would see us a little bit higher range. The cool thing about Evolt that makes us exclusive to other brands, if someone wants to check us out, we do have a coaches software that comes with it. Everything we do is cloud-based. You scan, it drops into the coach's dashboard where they can track. You get reporting, you get your athlete progression. If you're on the commercial side, there's some cool business retention reports of, "Hey, I haven't seen Dan in six weeks. His last three scans, I don't know. Where's he gone?" You'll get a list of those people.

And so it does cater to the athlete as well as the commercial side of it. With that software, again, we do... The coin is it is a retention tool for, again, whoever you're coaching. You have the data and then I'll show them, "This is what's happening in your... This is what I have programmed for you, this is what we're seeing." And whether that's changing athletic performance or getting them healthier, you now can show them actual raw objective data of this is how you have changed since I've been working with you. And again, we do have an end user app, which is free for the user. So if you all ever scan on an Evolt, you download the app, your data's there. And the cool thing about it is I'm in South Carolina, so if y'all come over here to Charleston and you scan, when you go back home and you go to your Evolt back home, you will still see your data from Charleston. So it's any machine in the world speaks to each other, which is pretty cool, especially when you do have online training clients and athletes that are dispersed all around.

So that is a little bit about Evolt. You can find us at evolt360.com. You'll see a wonderful headshot of me there on the website way far down at the bottom of the list, where I belong. Out of sight, out of mind. No. No. But if anyone has direct questions for me, I am more than happy to... I'll just throw the email out here. It's pretty simple. It's my name Chris.Reader, R-E-A-D-E-R, @evolt360.com. So any questions, any comments, anything that they need, it's an open email so they're more than welcome to shout them out at me.

Jenny Scott:

Awesome, thank you for that. So full disclosure, I've been looking at the InBody, they have a scale now for home with the little yeah handle that pops up and stuff. I've been looking at one of those. I think I'm going to have to talk with you a little offline about getting an Evolt, because just, I'm a lifetime athlete, so this would be super cool to have and it's portable so I can take it to my athletes. Super interesting, I love that there's so much out there. To your point, lots of different cool stuff out there. So I'm definitely going to look into this.

Chris Reader:

Any questions, shoot them my way.

Dan Duran:

Right on. Right on.

Jenny Scott:

Well this has been good. Dan, any takeaways today?

Dan Duran:

Fat doesn't contract, Jenny.

Jenny Scott:

I'm going to use that.

Dan Duran:

That's my takeaway for the day.

Chris Reader:

The title of the podcast.

Jenny Scott:

Right? I know for me it was a mind shift. I mean, I've been doing this for 14, 15 years now and when I think of body composition, I think of body fat. Right? The fat specifically, which does not contract, you are absolutely correct, gentlemen. But like hearing Chris talk about it though, you have to flip the way you're thinking about it. Body composition measures quite a bit of things and you don't have to just look at somebody's body fat percent like their body fat itself, the adiposity of that person. You can look at the muscle mass, the lean tissue, the things that we want to keep is the way I always tell people, it's your hair, your eyes, your skin, your bone, your muscles, all the things you want to keep. Right? You can look at that. That's more what we're concerned about versus the actual body fat part, for some people. So it's a mind shift for me and I appreciate that.

Dan Duran:

Amen to the hair part, by the way. Yes, we do want to keep that.

Jenny Scott:

Your hair, you definitely want to keep that.

Dan Duran:

That's right.

Jenny Scott:

That's awesome. Well Chris, thank you so much for joining us. This has been so much fun.

Chris Reader:

Yeah guys, it was good meeting you guys. Dan, always a pleasure sir.

Dan Duran:

Ditto. Ditto. Thanks for being here.

Jenny Scott:

Absolutely. Thank you guys for listening. Go back and re-listen, go check out the Evolt. But guys, as always, we appreciate you being here. Go out there into the world, do all of the things, be fruitful and as always make good choices. We'll be talking to you soon.